[Foundation-l] On curiosity, cats and scapegoats

Keegan Peterzell keegan.wiki at gmail.com
Thu Sep 15 07:35:17 UTC 2011


On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 1:28 PM, Kim Bruning <kim at bruning.xs4all.nl> wrote:

> On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 09:45:38AM -0400, Sydney Poore wrote:
> > >        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillarization
> > >
> > > Due to my knowing the historical context, I would actually prefer that
> > > people were confronted by cultural differences and have a healthy
> > > dialogue about them, to prevent or mitigate pillarization.
> >
> > Besides your acknowledged bias towards confronting people with their bias
> > and forcing a discussion,
>
> Yes, and this bias against bias has a name, it's called "NPOV".
>
>
etc...

Yes yes, Kim, I enjoy your discussion but we all well got the thought you
are provoking a long time ago.  This piecemeal dissection of an email is the
same sort of response many anons, registered (new and established) accounts
get on talk pages all the time.  And you wonder why it's discouraging.

The internet is a source of product- tangental, ephemeral, no matter- and
customer base relies on the product.  Wikipedia provides the encyclopedia as
a product.  Following that, 99.99% of the consumers don't know, or really
want to know, how the sausage is made.  If you want to wade into the English
Wikipedia in 2011 the experience is likely to be the same as if it were
2005: you can get templated, nothing can happen, you can get a response from
someone helpful, or you can get an asshole.  It's really all the same, no
matter how we color the glasses.

We attract intellectuals, and what we like is an argument.   What we have,
ten years into Wikipedia and 17 years into the internet boom is a new
generation of young and old intellectuals who are unfamiliar with flame
wars, USENET, email lists, old talk pages, and the concept that anyone can
edit.  Anyone can subscribe to this list- do you think they'd know what is
going on in our group dynamic?  The same applies, and has always applied to
Wikipedia.

We make people scared to edit.

~Keegan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan


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